by C McGivern
The honeymoon over, Duke’s perfect lover seemed to change before his eyes. At first, whilst she got what she wanted from the deal, Chata went along with him and gave him what he needed, maybe even, she really loved him. But as time went on she, like Josie before her, found herself unable to abide by his rules. He had discouraged her acting career, finding any number of weak excuses to deter her. He wanted a wife who was always available for him, he was prepared to give in anything in return, but he wanted to be pampered, babied and made a fuss of. The deep rooted desire was etched into his very being and stretched far back to his earliest memories. Chata couldn’t be the woman he wanted and she began to rebel. She had always been a heavy drinker but now, together with her alcoholic mother, she seemed to be permanently drunk. And like her mother, when she was drunk she became violent, suddenly turning on him like a wildcat. He was unprepared for physical abuse, he personally was a gentle lover, always very much the romantic, passionate perhaps but never violent, and he had no idea how to cope with her when she had been drinking heavily. She shouted, argued and attacked him with anything that came to hand, just as often as she made love to him.
Within months he was regretting rushing into marriage as both Chata and her mother became a severe drain on his emotions, filling his days with pain and anxiety. He was the big, tough hero of the silver screen, six foot four of pure muscle and being beaten up by his own wife! It was a living nightmare in which he loved, shouted, and had to defend himself against two female bullies.
His friends avoided him, embarrassed to witness Chata’s tantrums and the way she treated him when she was drunk. John Ford screamed at him on location, “Did you have to marry that whore?” angered by the effect she was having on his best boy. Duke replied with dead calm, “You’re talking about the woman I love,” before walking away from his long time mentor, head hanging in shame. She put an enormous stress on the long friendship and worse, damaged their working relationship. Ford was under pressure from his own wife who hated Chata and all she stood for in Duke’s life, and she constantly nagged him to put Wayne straight and tell him to get back to Josie and the kids where he belonged. He had fallen for the oldest trick in the book and Duke felt humiliated. He had never thought of himself as a fool, but that was exactly what Chata had made of him. She had been happy to make both promises and love, and now he had to pay for her favors. The payment wasn’t only financial but in the prestige she found attached to being Mrs John Wayne. He felt completely degraded by her, by the fact that he had fallen in love so easily, and because, lost in love as he had been, he had allowed her to tarnish the image he had worked so tirelessly to polish, he had allowed her to destroy his vision of what a real man should be.
Although he still loved her dearly she caused problems in every area of his life. He wanted to see his children but Josephine was reluctant to hand them over knowing his new wife would be around, probably drunk and possibly violent. He was forced into a compromise, if he wanted to see the children it had to be when he was away on location and Chata wasn’t there with him. His working hours became the only time Josephine allowed him access to the children, and so he began leaving his wife at home more often. Whenever the kids were on vacation they were ferried to some out of the way film set and though the compromise suited both parents, it didn’t necessarily suit either the kids or Chata, and the pressure inevitably built up for all concerned. Duke was doing everything he could to keep everyone happy; he accepted Josephine’s compromise, made every effort to see his children, he did what Chata wanted and the patterns of discontent, formed early in his life, developed as he moved in his ever decreasing circles.
Strangely, given their history, Duke and Josie returned to their old and long gone, relationship of relaxed, deep and mutual friendship. She finally permitted him to return to the family home whenever he wanted to see the kids, and he found a haven of peace there, “I believe I got along better with Josie and the kids after we were divorced. I had the feeling that we actually spent more time with them, even though I was working as hard as before. I think what it was that the fights stopped. I only saw how much hard feeling had built up after we split, and realized this had made the children nervous. Josie was a wonderful mother to them. I know that at first there were recriminations on her part, which I don’t blame her for, but she forgave me as time went by, and one thing I am grateful for … she never made the kids hate me. I’ll always be grateful for that. If I was intending to take the kids out I would ask Josie if she had anything planned first … I never wanted to force them into being with me if they didn’t want to be, or out of a sense of duty. We had bad quarrels, but when it came to the kids, those quarrels stopped right there. No matter what, we always remained partners for the kids. I was always allowed to be part of their lives as they were growing. I was always there and Josie always knew she could call me. Josie and I were blessed with four great children.” At least he hadn’t repeated the pattern laid down by his own parents, and he and Josie remained the best of friends, sharing a great and permanent tenderness toward each other and their children.
His growing power in the industry coincided with mounting problems at home, and Duke already foresaw the shadows of tragedy approaching. In that first year he made only two films, he had been contractually obliged to go through with those, but he spent the rest of his time in long production meetings with Jimmy Grant, planning Angel. He had discovered a new and exciting aspect of the film world, he was fascinated by it and he relished the new challenge that production offered. Chata found Duke’s film world and in particular, Jimmy Grant, boring. The two men spent endless hours together on pre-production, engrossed in the task of developing scripts and hiring cast and crew. Frequently they worked from early morning to late night and Duke joked that they might as well move in together. His interest in the project bordered on obsession and Chata complained that he talked about the film constantly, that he talked about it all through breakfast, lunch and dinner, and the rest of the time he spent working on it. He became temperamental, both at home and at work where he had frequent outbursts of wild temper; he had learned more than his craft from John Ford. He found it difficult to give any direction without resorting to bad or insulting language. Unlike his mentor however, he was always quick to apologize. “I’m always apologizing to someone,” was Duke’s constant lament.
One person he never had to apologize to was Gail Russell, the stunningly beautiful female lead of Angel and the Badman. Her career had started in Hollywood long before she graduated from school. She explained to Duke that everything had happened too fast for her, one minute she was still an innocent, naive schoolgirl and the next she was being groomed for stardom. He understood the enormous pressure the industry put on her, knew that before he hired her, other producers, directors and stars, all eager for her sexual favors, had taken advantage of her youth and innocence. She was beautiful but extremely fragile, sensitive and afraid to say “no” to anyone, she was unsuited to the cut throat world of Hollywood. John Wayne appeared to her like a knight in shining armor. He treated her with a natural gentleness and politeness that she was unused to, and it was inevitable that she would form a strong emotional and physical attachment toward a man she saw as her protector. She was obsessed with him and followed him around, hanging on his every word, longing for his soft kindness. Soon Hollywood was alight with gossip. Duke swore he never took advantage of the frail star who said of him, “The one word that defines Duke is “honest” he’s an honest man, and he can’t be otherwise.”
He was willing to act the father figure, and he listened intently as she poured her heart and her problems out. He felt his customary need to protect the weak, and he continually advised, “Gail, you have just got to learn to say “no” to some of this shit.” She was his employee, he had hired her, and he wanted her at her best for his first production. He also well remembered how it felt starting out in a rough world; at the start he had been little better equipped than her to cope, but he had survived. No
w he felt the responsibility for helping another person overcome the difficulties. He had been helped along the way by Harry and Olive Carey, John Ford, and many others, now it fell to him to do his bit.
In the film she played a Quaker who converts Wayne, a violent gunman, into a peaceful man. It was widely rumored that she led him into other activities off set as well. He had always been adept at covering his tracks, at avoiding scandal, but he never wavered in his denial of an affair with Gail Russell, even though the honeymoon period with Chata was fast receding into a dim and murky past.
He was back in the old routine of arriving home at night exhausted and things were even worse now than when he had been with Josie. It was often as much as he could do to manage a bourbon and ice. If he bothered to eat anything he didn’t bother to speak before collapsing into bed, and then he was too tired to satisfy the passionate Chata. He never wanted to go out, had no interest in parties and he became to her exactly what he had been to Josie before. Where Josie had wanted dinner parties and guests over all the time, Chata wanted to go night-clubbing. All he wanted was sleep; when a reporter asked the newly married couple what they did in their spare time Duke replied, “Chata reads. I sleep.” She attempted to teach him better Spanish, he was too tired. She tried talking to him, he was too tired to listen. She tried babying him, offering massages and showers, he was just too tired. He might show Gail gentle consideration during working hours but he had nothing left for his bride when he got home. His industry, his profession, his life called and he went running, just as he always had, and always would. He thought Chata should adapt herself to his needs, and he argued that she had known what he was when she married him. He was unreasonable, for she could have had no way of understanding the depth of his passion, nor that his profession would always come first. She was not even sure that it was his career that was taking him away from her then, and she was much more jealous of Gail Russell’s influence over her husband, than she was of his work.
When Chata moaned about Gail, he had no idea what the problem was. He hoped she would eventually get used to his co-stars because there was nothing he could do about the fact that he made films with beautiful women. Chata had instantly picked up on the rumors flying around Hollywood about him showering Miss Russell with attention, about him going to her dressing room alone, about how she frequently went to his. She was uneasy; possibly with some cause, about Miss Russell’s intentions toward her husband. She resented the fact that he was willing to spend time with his co-star when all he did was fall asleep when he got home to her. She drank heavily every night while she waited for him and by the time he fell through the door exhausted she was already in a drunken rage, screaming at him, and demanding to know where he had been. Mary said, “Chata was so jealous that any time Gail even came toward his office, Duke headed out of the back door.” He even asked Mary to make sure Gail understood that he felt protective toward her but nothing else, “but do it gently” he added.
The day filming finished Duke took the crew to a wrap party. Chata hadn’t been part of the film and wasn’t invited, but she wasn’t used to the workings of the film community and she sat waiting for him to come home. At two in the morning she began ringing round desperately trying to find him. Finally she reached one of the crew who told her the party had ended some time before, and that Duke had taken Gail home. She rang Miss Russell’s house and was told that the two of them had gone off to a motel! She was devastated and bolted the front door before going to bed. When he eventually arrived home she refused to let him in, “Chata, come on let me in. It’s Duke.” She didn’t answer so he kicked a glass panel out of the door and let himself in, as he did in so many of his films. Chata raced to meet him brandishing a loaded automatic. She waved it in his face and told him she was going to kill him. Duke, falling-down drunk, was unconcerned and muttered under his breath that she was mad, that he hadn’t betrayed her, that he didn’t know what she was talking about. He collapsed on the couch but later said he was conscious of Chata and her mother “yabba-yabba-yabbing in the background.” In fact only Chata’s mother prevented murder that night when she pulled the weapon from her daughter’s hand before any harm was done. Chata desperately shook him as she tried to rouse him from his stupor to demand why he had bought Miss Russell a car and why he had spent the night with her. “Oh, don’t worry,” he mumbled, “it’s nothin’ to get upset about.” And that was all he ever said on the subject. He never mentioned Gail Russell either to his wife or the press until some years later when he commented that he believed it was unfair to drag Gail’s name into his messy divorce, “If she’d testified against me, fine, but dragging my friends into it, and making white look black… poor Gail.”
He felt truly sorry for her. He had paid a lot of money to buy her contract, but Republic was only paying her a small wage and she was working for very little on his film. He remembered how it felt when studios took you for granted, and he gave her money out of his own pocket, calling it a down payment on a car. “It was open and above board,” he said later. “And sure, I did take Gail home after the party, but her mother and brother were there. I offered to drive her home in her car. We left the studio and were following some friends in another car… we lost them in traffic…We went to a café in Santa Monica and had something to eat and I ran into some old friends from Glendale and we were there a while… then I took her home … ”
He was asked, “Were there any improprieties between you and Miss Russell?” … “Absolutely not.” “Were you at a motel at any time that night?” … “Absolutely not.”
“What happened when you arrived home?” … “I got home about one-thirty a.m. My wife refused to let me in. I could hear her and her Mother talking about me loudly. I rang the bell but they wouldn’t open the door. Then I broke the glass panel and opened it myself. Later Chata and her mother, they came charging out. Chata had a .45 in her hand. She and her mother were fighting over it. Then it quietened down.”
That was his version, given under oath at the divorce trial. At the time of the incident he hadn’t even been married a year and he couldn’t understand why his wife was so jealous. She must have known how much he loved her. He knew now that she hadn’t and that he should have told her instead of falling asleep.
There was a long way to go and much heartache before reaching that divorce. He and Chata were always fighting and then making up again. She was drinking almost as much as he did himself, and if she hadn’t been an alcoholic when they first met, she was now. She had been raised in a family where it was the custom to resort to violence as a speedy solution to life’s problems. He often appeared at work covered in scratches and bruises. Gentle, motherly Mary, once joked, “Looks like someone got even with you,” when he arrived at Republic with a deep gash across his face. He answered, “Yeah, my wife,” as he walked past, eyes fixed straight ahead. He called her into his office to explain that Chata had been drunk at a party and had insulted other guests, “I felt embarrassed and suggested we leave. She screamed that she was having a great time and wanted to stay. When she refused to go quietly I picked her up and carried her out to the car.” The argument became more heated and she reached across to scratch him across the cheek. When they got home, he locked her in her room, “Next morning she couldn’t even remember having been at a party. I’m really worried about her.”
Mary felt guilty about her earlier comment, “But, Duke, I thought this was a love match.”
He cried sadly, “So did I.”
Despite the coldness of his own childhood he had never known physical abuse and now he didn’t know what to do when his wife lashed out wildly at him. He didn’t even know what he did to enrage her but he hoped the tension would pass once she came to accept his world and his devotion to his craft, once she got used to him and his working patterns. When he wasn’t working he intended to devote every second of his day to her and he wasn’t unduly worried at first. She might hit out at him when she was drunk or upset but she could also make him f
eel better than anyone else ever had. He loved making everything right again, wherever they happened to be; putting the world to rights was the best part of being with his fiery wife.
But things didn’t go well and he didn’t make things right often enough. Instead he got tied up in post-production problems on Angel and abandoned Chata to her own temper for long stretches. Meanwhile he bitterly resented his ever present mother-in-law who had become a source of constant irritation to him. When he complained to Chata, asking her to send her mother home so they might have a chance at building a proper marriage, she just shrugged.
Another major problem turned out to be his fastidious cleanliness. He liked the feel of his skin after showering; he liked to dress in fresh, clean smelling clothes. People always noticed and commented that he smelt so good. Chata, on the other hand, was less than fussy, either about showering or the washing of her clothes. She cut her own hair and applied her make-up without caring how she actually looked. At first he didn’t comment about that or about the fact that she didn’t shave her legs, but Mary recalled, “It drove him nuts but he was afraid to say anything to her, he didn’t want to hurt her feelings!” Eventually Mary was called in to intervene on his behalf and he soon noticed Chata was washing and shaving a little more regularly. It had been fairly painless to overcome. Getting rid of her mother was another matter entirely; she was a problem no one else could help him with.